


promises to keep

by taywen



Category: Spinning Silver - Naomi Novik, Uprooted - Naomi Novik
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 10:42:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17222498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taywen/pseuds/taywen
Summary: The Staryk king takes a walk in a wood. The Wood, to be precise.





	promises to keep

**Author's Note:**

> title from Robert Frost.

He had not long been king when, foolhardy and reckless, he tried to follow the witch home.

He had grown tired of enduring her presence on the edge of his realm. Her magic was strange and powerful, with no particular set of rules or forms that he could discern from his distant observation within the glass mountain. He was aware of everything that came to pass in the winter world, if he put his mind to it, and he was ever conscious of the witch’s presence, like the slow drip of a melting icicle, the harbinger of spring. He knew when she entered his realm, and when she departed, and he had observed often enough that he could walk the same path she took, following her through the closing door before it shut completely in her wake.

He followed her into the sunlight, but it did not shine on the sunlit realm he knew.

She was not from the sunlit realm whose border marched with his own; this much, he had known. She moved through it as easily as she passed through his kingdom, but her home was another world entirely. It was not unlike the sunlit realm, but there was no corresponding fairy realm—no glass mountain, no goblin barrows, no wooded fortress, no trace of another world waiting just beyond the veil for him to enter at the twitch of a finger—

That was imprecise. There was a forest. A Wood. The witch’s cottage—the witch herself nowhere in evidence, though he had been but steps behind her—lay at the Wood’s edge, just beyond the shadow cast by its dark boughs. It felt not unlike the forest he had visited in his long-past youth, home of a rival court whose borders lay far enough distant from the glass mountain’s that they could pledge friendship while secure in the knowledge that it would never be called upon, yet this Wood was wholly present on the mortal plane.

It was no ordinary mortal forest, however. Unlike the manifestation of his forest in the sunlit realm, where he could claim dominion over only the trees and animals dappled white, every tree was touched by magic. Some were more steeped in it than others, but everything had some trace of it.

He cast around for the witch, but if she was present, she hid herself well. He stepped into the Wood, each footfall leaving a frosted print behind as the ground beneath his boots froze solid. The source of the Wood’s magic was further in; perhaps from it he could glean some wisdom on how to keep his kingdom so strong on the mortal plane.

* * *

At length, he came upon a tree. This tree was different from the others, alone in the middle of a clearing, and felt strongly of magic.

He had passed other beings—spindly-legged stick creatures, and animals so steeped in the magic of this place that he hardly recognized them—but they all kept their distance from him. But when he stepped up to the heart-tree, a massive mantis dropped down from the boughs behind him. It struck at him, but before its scythe could reach him, ice spread up its length and then its arm in an inexorable wave, until it had consumed the entirety of the creature, leaving it frozen mid-swing.

He did not turn away from his contemplation of the heart-tree even as a second mantis smashed through the one he had just frozen. He scarcely felt the shattered remains as they met his ice. Without looking, he raised his hand and froze the second mantis as he had the first before turning all his attention back to the heart-tree.

There was a darkness to the heart-tree that his magic could not penetrate. When he laid a hand upon its smooth bark, the wood stayed strong; it did not grow brittle with cold, or pale with frost. It was the same darkness that permeated the Wood. It tried to claim him as he drew back his hand, as if he had not noticed the fainter miasma infesting the very air; he shook his hand once, dispelling the clinging tendrils.

“Who are you?”

A queen stood before him. The queen of this Wood. She wore no crown, but he could not mistake her.

“The Staryk king.” As they were of the same rank, he did not bow, though he did incline his head slightly: this was her realm, after all.

“You trespass in my domain.”

“There was no indication my presence was unwanted when I first entered.” Her creatures had all fled before him, aside from the mantises; but he had been within the borders of the Wood long enough that their attempts to repel him now did not require him to leave.

The Wood-Queen did not dispute this. Her eyes were a dark green barely a shade away from black, and they moved with listless disinterest over his form. She was no forest spirit he recognized; he could not say _what_ she was, beyond that she was the source of the Wood’s magic. Would his own realm feel half so steeped in his magic to her as the Wood did to him?

“What do you want? You need no wood to burn for warmth.”

He hissed in distaste at the very thought. “Your realm is well-guarded.” Any mortals foolish enough to venture beneath the boughs of her forest would not make it back out again. If only he could secure his forest so well from poachers. “I would protect mine in kind.”

A flicker of _something_ sparked in those dark, otherwise lifeless eyes. Anger. Her lip curled into a feral snarl. “The humans trespass upon your realm as well?”

“They infest every part of the world,” he agreed.

“Then kill them.” The answer was laughably simple, but her countenance was serious.

“They breed like rats.” Kill one, and dozens more would spawn. The humans would forget a few deaths here and there, but that same forest court he had once visited had made the mistake of going to war with the humans, and it had fallen long before he took the crown. What the humans lacked in power, they made up with in numbers, and some among them had powerful magic as well; given the proper motivation, their witches and wizards might force their way into the fairy realms.

“They have their uses. They serve as adequate fertilizer for our roots.”

There was no ready reply to that. He had no use for humans when they lived, but that they might have gold for the taking, and they were worth even less once they were dead; the corpses of poachers in his forest were left to rot where they fell, to be taken in time by the earth, but he did not leave the bodies for that specific purpose. The thought appalled him. As if he should need the humans to strengthen his forest.

“You disapprove.” There was an edge to her voice, but he could not read it.

“I do not judge the customs of others within their own realm,” he said smoothly, falling back on the expected forms. “Your people thrive, I imagine.” That skirted the truth; he had seen no sign of her people either; the creatures he had encountered in the Wood were hers the way the sharp-toothed deer and the snow-dappled game were his—they belonged to their rulers, but they were not kin. Thus, he imagined that she was the only one of her people left, but she was yet living—surely she had thrived when they had not.

The Wood-Queen’s eyes slid past him, lighting upon the heart-tree. Warmth—affection?—seemed to animate her once more as she gazed upon it, a smile twisting her face strangely. “They slumber in peace, sustained by those who would harm them.”

He did not shudder, though he felt as if he had been buffeted by spring’s first breeze. She looked back blankly, apathy rendering her features immobile and her eyes dull once more. Her skin was mottled like bark, what clothes she wore stained in places—with dirt, he had first thought. With the earth that was so obviously her element, as he was garbed in ice. But now he wondered if it was blood, long-dried, the vital red that spilled from human flesh when it was rent by a blade of Staryk silver left to linger for so long that it faded to black. Without any emotion to give her life, she resembled a corpse more than anything, one foot already in an earthy grave.

Did her people bury their dead? The wood spirits of his world consigned theirs to the earth, but he could not imagine that they had ever fed upon humans—

He turned, unwilling and yet compelled, to look at the heart-tree. At one of the Wood-Queen’s people. It was not steeped in magic, as he had first thought: it _was_ magic. Those portions of it that he had mistaken for parts untouched yet by her influence were actually remnants of the humans that she had fed to it, until the heart-tree was full up with the same darkness that sustained its queen. If he concentrated, he could sense dozens of other heart-trees spread out around him, all of them as corrupted as the Wood-Queen.

“You guard your borders well,” he said at last, before the silence could drag on too long. She was yet watching him, her form as still as the trees around her. In their shade, it was difficult to pick out the faint shade of green in her eyes. Meeting her gaze was like staring out beyond his borders, only to find something staring back at him from the dark.

“I do what I must,” the Wood-Queen said. She was proud, as any ruler ought to be: her people were safe, her borders fast, her dominion over her realm complete. She could spread her borders further, but for what purpose? The villages dotting the valley provided what little the Wood itself could not.

The Staryk queen that had brought their realm into the darkness had not been the first fairy ruler to choose to lead their people away from the mortal plane, but neither had she been the last. Even so, the decision had not been a popular one. The light of the sun could be inimical, but the darkness was no safer—and there was nothing else in the dark, nothing beyond their borders that could sustain their people the way the land continued uninterrupted in the sunlit realm.

If the alternatives to retreating into the dark were to fall to the steady encroachment of the humans or to become the darkness instead, he could find no fault in that long-dead Staryk queen’s decision.

“You have done so much. Will you join them in their slumber?” he asked.

Grief twisted her face into a more familiar shape, but the feral anger from before followed swiftly on its heels. The branches of the trees about them seemed to lean in as she stalked closer, shutting out the sun’s light. “Why?” she demanded, with a fury that ran as deep as the taproot of the oldest heart-tree in the Wood. “So you can steal my secrets for yourself, little Icicle-King?”

He held his tongue on an answering insult, for it was no less than a trespasser deserved. “No,” he said coldly. The darkness pressed in upon him from all sides, its tendrils creeping over his layers of ice. They would find no chink in his armour, but that knowledge did not render the sensation any more palatable. “But I have overstayed my welcome. I will not tread upon your hospitality any longer.”

“Run along, then.” The dismissal was as clear as insult as any, and again he gave it no answer. He was conscious that she was old—far older than he was, perhaps older than the queen of his people who had led them to the glass mountain—and he was at the heart of her realm. If she challenged him, he could not say who would emerge the victor, but he doubted that she would be so easy an opponent to dispatch as he had his predecessor.

She turned back to the heart-tree, laying her hand in the exact place where he had pressed his own before she had appeared, but he did not mistake her averted gaze for inattention; this play at indifference sat upon the Wood-Queen even more poorly than the apathy, a cheap, chipped veneer spread thin over the feral anger that had taken root within her.

Her eyes remained upon him, tracking his movements as he strode back through the trees. He had not laid a hand upon his sword when he first entered the Wood, but he kept the hilt in his grasp now, certain that she would seize the least excuse to set upon him.

Still he could not let down his guard once he had crossed the treeline, for attuned to the Wood-Queen’s magic as he was, he could perceive now how the darkness spread from the Wood, its roots reaching with an implacable hunger toward the villages in the distance, invisible from the surface. He nearly missed the witch’s presence as well, focused as he was on the Wood.

But there she stood before the door of her cottage some distance away. Surely her cottage had stood closer to the trees when he had first seen it? But now it lay well beyond the Wood, and the witch with it. He could feel her eyes upon him, but her gaze lacked the malice of the Wood-Queen’s. All the same, he hesitated to meet her.

But the path back to his kingdom was closed. He knew how the witch crossed from there to this world, but the way back must follow a different route, for he could not see it.

Gritting his teeth, he stepped fully into the sunlight, allowing it to melt away the topmost layer of his ice and with it the last traces of the Wood-Queen’s darkness. He cared not for the witch, but he would not bring such corruption back to his own kingdom.

She wasted no time with formalities when he drew near, her amusement palpable as she asked, “Do you require a boon, o king?”

“I have allowed your shack to remain within my borders. In exchange, you may return me to my realm,” he told her harshly.

She laughed then, throwing her head back, her seemingly ancient mortal frame shaking with the force of it. “No, Your Majesty,” she said when she had caught her breath, “I did not stop you from following in my footsteps in payment for your generous allowance. In exchange for suffering the continued existence of my humble shack at the edge of your kingdom, I will return you to your winter realm.”

The terms were not unfair, though they rankled all the same. The king of the Staryk did not _bargain_ with mortals. But neither would he stay here, in the shadow of the Wood and its queen.

“So long as you do not interfere in my affairs or the affairs of my people,” he said through gritted teeth.

The witch considered this, then held out one gnarled hand. “Shake hands with Baba Jaga, and pact will be sealed.”

He could scarcely recall anything he had desired to touch less, aside from the darkness that lurked in the Wood behind him; she grinned, as if well aware of the bend of his thoughts. Her grip was deceptively strong when he grasped her hand, the magic thrumming beneath her skin as powerful as he had ever felt from a mortal. Her fingers were unpleasantly warm to him, but if the chill of his own skin caused her discomfort, she gave no sign of it.

He tensed, too late, as he felt her magic stir. Her method of working magic was unlike any he had seen before, half-familiar and all the more jarring for it; not unlike his experience in the Wood. By the time he extracted his hand from her grasp, they had already reached their destination. It took him a moment to recognize it, for he had never before been within its walls.

The witch’s cottage was—plain. Nothing like the great cathedrals or thick-walled fortresses the humans built to house their gold—or display it, as some of the grand churches had before he rode out with his knights to take it, for they obviously had no use for it. If there was any gold—or even inferior mortal silver—present within the humble home, he could not perceive it.

But this witch was too cunning to freely give him an excuse to drive her out.

“For what reason did you settle in my realm?” he asked, for he was familiar with mortal avarice and fear and most other of their base instincts, and the witch exhibited none of them. She could not truly fear the Wood, else why would she keep her cottage so near? She had never taken what was not hers, never attempted to make contact with his people, nor tried to bring any others to his kingdom.

“I grow weary of the world.” Which world exactly, she did not specify. “The petty concerns of foolish lords and grasping wizards bore me.”

So she had inflicted herself upon his realm simply because she found her own kind insufferable and therefore shirked the obligation her power bestowed upon her. How very typical of a mortal. He did not bother to hide his disdain, turning on his heel and stepping into the familiar, comforting chill of his realm. His armour of ice thickened with each second he remained in the cold.

As he walked away, he realized: the witch’s cottage did not feel like it was a part of his kingdom, though it stood within his borders. He frowned as he strode away swiftly atop the deep snow, but he did not look back, for all he would see was the cottage, and perhaps even the witch herself.

Her laughter drifted after him anyway, caught on the winter breeze that gusted through the white trees.


End file.
